by Axler, James
The rags were layered and swathed around the figure's head and face so that only the eyes were showing. They glittered with determination and not a little madness as they bored into J.B. And yet there was something in them…
It wasn't a total surprise for J.B. when the voice that emerged from the swaddling was female.
"If you value your life, at least for the short time to come, then you will not resist me."
The voice was sibilant, hissing with a cleft-palate lisp that made it sound even more threatening than the circumstances dictated.
The eyes and voice had momentarily hypnotized the Armorer to the extent that he didn't, for a second, feel her hands as they darted across his body. His knife was unsheathed with a practiced ease, and the Smith & Wesson M-4000 was slipped from its secure moorings. The pockets of ammo that were located all over his body were also probed.
"You will come with me now, away from this hole and into the valley. It is… milder…there. We wish to talk with you."
J.B. found himself nodding agreement with the biting voice even though all his instincts were telling him to fight back, his muscles refused to respond, almost paralyzed by the hypnotic tones.
Suddenly the woman on top of him stiffened, her muscles contracting. Her eyes lost contact with his for a fraction of a second before J.B. heard a dull thud, and the eyes closed.
He felt instantly as though his strength were restored to him, and he rolled the unconscious body off him.
MILDRED WYETH WAS starting to feel really angry. As if it wasn't bad enough that the idiot Murphy's sec men had them pinned down, and this damn dust storm made it impossible to see more than two feet in front of your nose, now it seemed as though a third faction had joined the fray. She had no idea who they were and where they might have come from. Neither did she care. They were another obstacle between the companions and freedom. Holding the ZKR with the poise and assurance that had made her an Olympic silver medalist in predark times, Mildred made her way from cover to cover, knowing that J.B. was in front of her, and—hopefully— Doc behind. How the old man would cope in these conditions worried her. His fragile psyche had taken a battering in the past few days. Sure, all of them had been victim to the same method of torture, but Doc was closer to the edge than most. Hell, most of the time he was well and truly over that edge. And yet the old man had shown time and again reserves of physical and mental strength that had astounded her.
But right now she had herself to worry about. To her right a small pile of gravel littered the earth.
She looked up sharply, leveling the ZKR where she expected to see one of Murphy's sec men. Instead she saw a bundle of rags head past her, tripping along a narrow track that a rat would have trouble keeping a footing on, let alone a human being.
"Well, I'll be…" she murmured to herself. The figure was heading toward J.B.'s cover. If she squinted hard enough, Mildred could just make out the Armorer's fedora and a blurred shape beneath that could be his darkly clad body merging into the cover he had taken. She saw him move off into the open, heading for the next piece of cover.
Then she saw the ragged figure gain ground on him with a sense of purpose.
"Shit, John, do I have to get you out of everything?" she whispered before setting off at a brisk trot in pursuit of the ragged figure.
A sudden volley of shots from above diverted her attention from what was happening in front of her. Spinning on her heel, Mildred dived for cover…except that there wasn't any, the sniper had caught her out in the open.
She hit the ground hard, taking the impact on her shoulder and using it as momentum to pitch and roll. Her heavy coat, pockets burdened, slowed her fractionally as she came up on her knees, holding the ZKR in front of her in a two-handed grip. From the manner in which the ground had spurted around her as she fell and rolled, she had calculated that the sniper would be to her left and about twenty feet up.
Her eyes raked the face of the valley, trying to locate the sec man before he had a chance to get his eye in and chill her.
There…she could see the barrel of his H&K resting on top of a rock, his head clearly visible.
She took aim. The sec man had taken off his protective helmet in order to get closer in to his blaster, resting the stock against his cheek. His sparse, cropped dark hair was rippling in the howling wind.
Mildred ignored the spray of earth around her that joined the storm-tossed detritus as the sec man blasted at her, trying to get his aim right. Gritting her teeth and narrowing her eyes to sight along the ZKR, Mildred got him perfectly within her range. Breathing deeply and slowly to try to counter the adrenaline rush in her guts, she applied a gentle but firm pressure to the trigger of her blaster.
She was quick but wasn't careless. There was no way she was going to waste the two shots that could save her life.
Mildred squeezed off the two rounds. The first caught the sec man on the scalp, making him jerk to one side with pain and surprise. The second had originally been intended to hit him just beneath the right eye—exposed, as he had been sighting her through his left. However, the shock and jolt of the scalp wound caused him to move in such a way that his head shifted toward the line of the bullet, which caught him just beneath the nose. The lead ripped through his top lip, breaking open his palate with a splintering of bone and a pulping of soft flesh. The bone splinters ricocheted around the sinus cavities as his nose powdered under the impact. Bone shards followed the bullet as it drove into his brain.
Mildred didn't have time to watch him die. As soon as she saw him spin for a second time, she knew that he was already dead. By the time his corpse slumped over the rocks and slid down the face of the valley, dragged down by its own deadweight, Mildred was already headed toward J.B. and the ragged figure.
It had taken only a couple of seconds to dispel the danger to herself, but it was long enough for the ambulatory bundle of rags to catch up to the stumbling Armorer and throw itself at him.
Mildred prayed that the howling winds would drown out her footsteps, even though she ran with as light a step as she could manage. The figure was now on top of J.B., facing in the opposite direction to her, so at least it couldn't sight her as she tried to make ground.
She cursed the bundle of rags for being so shapeless and flowing. There was no way she could risk a shot as the rags spread out over the prone Armorer, making it impossible for her to delineate where the attacker ended and J.B. began.
The hissing sounds of low speech reached her ears when she came within range. Why wasn't John trying to fight back?
Without breaking stride or pausing for thought, Mildred tossed the ZKR in the air, catching it by the barrel and preparing to use the butt as a club. As she came within a few strides, she was sure that the bundle of rags could hear her, as it seemed to suddenly pause and incline its head.
But Mildred was quicker, bringing the butt crashing down on where she thought the skull would be located under the rags. She felt some satisfaction as the slumping figure fell off J.B. He looked up at her like a man waking from sleep.
"What was that about, John?" she asked by way of greeting. The smile on her face, however, faded quickly as she felt the pricking of a sharpened blade penetrate through the thick coat on her back and draw a bead of blood in her lumbar region. The warm blood trickled across and down, mixing with the sudden cold sweat.
"Drop the blaster, missy. I don't think Tilly is going to be too happy with you when she comes around—if you haven't broke her bastard skull."
Mildred raised her hands and let her pistol fall to the ground.
She looked at J.B., who was still seemingly dazed, and shrugged.
"Some days you just shouldn't get up. Am I right?"
KRYSTY STAYED behind the rock, keeping as much of the open space as she could see through the swirling dust clouds. Through the roar and howl of the storm she could hear scattered shooting and the yelling of voices. Roughly estimating the size of the enclave from what she had seen so far, she figured th
at it wasn't that large, which made it all the more frightening that she couldn't see what was going on a few yards in front of her. But she had heard Dean's shouted exchange with his father, and watched the boy zigzag past her to find cover. She knew that Ryan was waiting for them at the pass out of the enclave, and wondered how they would all get to somewhere they couldn't even see.
Her ears were sharp enough to detect the distances between the different sounds of blasterfire and movements that she could hear in the enclave. Sharp enough to tell when someone was running toward her.
Krysty whirled to face the direction of the sound and leveled her blaster.
"It's me," Dean whispered as he appeared through the curtain of the storm, his Browning raised and on the defensive.
"Gaia! I nearly chilled you, Dean," Krysty replied, dropping the blaster from its targeted spot over Dean's chest.
"Had to move quickly. They're gaining ground on us all the time," Dean said breathlessly as he slid in next to her behind the rock. "Dad's waiting at the pass, Jak's gone back to try and find Doc 'cause he's gone missing. Don't know about J.B. or Mildred. This storm is slowing us up."
Dean reacted with concern when he saw the way that Krysty's fiery red hair was moving about, coiling in tendrils about her head, neck and shoulders.
"Something wrong?"
She nodded. "Not sure what. But something other than what we're prepared for."
"Murphy's sec men know this land well—and seeing as they got outside before us, I reckon it's not too hard to see how they could get the upper hand on this terrain. We should expect anything from them."
Krysty smiled at Dean. He was learning fast, but still hadn't quite caught up.
"Trouble is, I don't think it's Murphy's men that we've got to look out for."
Dean frowned. "Then who?"
"Good question, young'an. Mebbe I can give you an answer."
Both Krysty and Dean froze at the voice from behind them. Sure, it was possible that one of them, in the noise and confusion of the storm and the fighting, may have missed the sound of an approach from the rear, but for both of them to miss it entirely bespoke a silent enemy to be reckoned with.
"Now, if you want to draw more than one more breath, I'd suggest that you drop those there blasters and turn around real slow, like."
Dean and Krysty both complied, the woman's hair curling tightly and protectively to her neck.
"Say, looks like you're a mutie, lady," said their captor wonderingly.
"Does it make a lot of difference?" she asked, her voice tight with the tension that coursed through her.
"Mebbe, mebbe not," the voice replied. "Guess it doesn't matter a damn. Not really. Just curious. Now, if you'll be so good as to turn around…"
"Guess we don't have much choice," Krysty muttered as both she and Dean turned slowly to face their captor.
He was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet and at least four hundred pounds. The homemade blaster he held in both hands was a gigantic weapon fashioned of what seemed to be two old motorcycle exhausts welded together and bound with wire. The stock appeared to be a burned and scarred old lump of timber, and the trigger was like a rusty old nail.
It seemed to be the sort of device that would explode in its user's hands when the slightest pressure was applied to the trigger. The trouble was, with a blaster that size, the surrounding area would also get wasted. And that included them.
"Okay, now that we're all friendly, like, I suggest we get the hell out of here before that hell-spawn catch up with either us or you—depending on who they're after."
"Oh, it's us all right," Krysty said.
"Well, now, I guess that's not up to me to decide." There was something about the way he said it as he looked them up and down that made Krysty's skin crawl. Then he continued in a less disturbing tone of voice. "Those sure are nice blasters you got there. Be a shame to waste them, so why don't you just pick them up by the wrong end and carry them stretched out in front of you, like."
He waited until they had done so. "All right, so let's move on out of here."
"What if the sec men from the redoubt attack us now?" Krysty asked.
"Then you get chilled. So the sooner we head out, the better." The giant chuckled cheerfully to himself.
"That makes me feel so much better," Dean mumbled as they began to walk.
The sounds of blasterfire and shouting decreased in frequency and volume as they trudged the few hundred yards to where Ryan was waiting at the head of the only track out of the enclave. Like them, he was covered by an antique and home-repaired blaster.
Ryan exchanged questioning glances with Krysty, who tried to convey to him in a simple gesture that she couldn't figure out what was going on, either.
J.B. and Mildred emerged from the opaque blanket of swirling dust and dirt, carrying between them what appeared to be a bundle of rags. The giant covering Krysty and Dean shook his head and clicked his tongue softly.
"Wouldn't like to be them," he said softly.
Krysty took one look at the face of the man with the bayoneted Lee Enfield who stalked behind Mildred and J.B. and agreed silently.
Before the Armorer and Mildred had a chance to say anything, Jak emerged from the storm, followed by a squat man whose blaster was trained in the middle of Jak's back.
"Okay, let's move out," said the man covering Ryan, his eyes darting sharply across the dust-shrouded enclave.
They all noticed that Doc was missing. Jak shrugged as their eyes asked the question.
Chapter Eleven
Doc emerged from unconsciousness with a groan. It had been a coma so deep, albeit short, that for minutes he had been aware of nothing. Not even blackness.
The old man realized that his mouth tasted of the sour salt that was dried blood. His eyes felt heavy, and his head ached in a strangely throbbing manner. He opened one eye cautiously, and the reason for the throbbing became obvious.
Doc was hanging upside down over Murphy's shoulder. At least he assumed it to be Murphy, as it was the sec chief who had rendered him unconscious.
Next he was aware of both an artificial quality to the light and the absence of both wind and grit scouring his skin.
They were back in the redoubt…
"I'll say one thing for you, old fart—you've got damn good powers of recovery for someone your age," Murphy said, failing to keep the admiration out of his voice as he felt Doc's weight shift on his shoulder. "Though from what I hear, you aren't as old as you look…or maybe older, if you want to be strictly accurate."
Murphy chuckled and stopped, lowering Doc until the old man was back on his feet. Doc took an uncertain step to try to regain equilibrium. Murphy, sensing that, unlike earlier shams, Tanner was really at a loss to fight back, helped the old man to steady himself.
"I would thank you for your kind assistance, if not for the fact that it is you who is responsible for my current condition," Doc muttered as he gingerly felt the side of his face that ached. It was already swollen.
"Don't worry, I didn't hit you hard enough to break anything. The Gen would have me recycled if I'd harmed you permanently in any way," Murphy said grimly. "You're a very important person to him, so I had my orders. And we always go by the regs down here."
There was something in the way he said it that made Doc start. Was that irony in his tone? A suspicion that may be worth filing away for later.
Doc bowed mockingly—and regretted it instantly. "I always believe on congratulating a craftsman who knows his art," he murmured.
"Better believe it, bub. I could've harmed you without blinking," Murphy said, this time without a trace of irony, as he examined his rings, rubbing the skull ring with a kind of pride. "I know just the right amount of pressure or force for any blow."
"That I can only too well believe," Doc replied ruefully. Then, looking around him, added, "I would assume that you were instructed to bring me back at the expense of my companions because of whatever madness Wallace has in mind?"
"I take your point," Doc said simply. "You need have no fears about any form of resistance from me at this point. In the words of old vids, it would be futile."
Doc's eyes strayed to Murphy's waistband, which held both the LeMat and the swordstick.
"Then let's get going," Murphy said, gesturing in front of them.
"Yes, let us," Doc added with a theatrical lack of enthusiasm before starting to walk down the corridor, Murphy's footsteps echoing a fraction of a second behind his own.
WALLACE WAS SITTING behind his desk, agitated and fussing over piles of paperwork when Doc entered his office, preceded by a brisk knock from Murphy. The sec chief brought up the rear, closing the door behind them.
"Sir, prisoner Tanner," he barked.
Wallace looked up from the paperwork, his hands freezing over sheets the relevance of which had ceased to be of importance many decades before. Like everything else in the redoubt, it was something Wallace did as a ritualistic task.
"Prisoner?" he replied softly. "Dr. Tanner is our guest, our honored guest. Without him there can be no hope for the mechanism. He was sent as a sign that there is still a point, a purpose to our existence. He is a sign that our work can still continue."
Doc raised an eyebrow. "And what, pray tell, is this work that I can help you to continue? Why me?"
Wallace smiled. It had that cold, leering quality often ascribed to the shark, but no shark could convey the sinister undertone of madness in Wallace's eyes.
"You will see in time, Doctor. But first—" he turned to Murphy. "—I must deal with the guard. Sarj Murphy?"
"Sir?" Murphy clicked ostentatiously to attention and stared fixedly at a point three feet above Wallace's head. The sudden hardening of the Gen's tone was a grim foreboding.